Our Shame (Ao and Mountain): Two Tech Workers Who Said in Synthesizers What They Couldn't Say at the Office

30-second overview: Our Shame (凹與山) is a Taiwanese folktronica duo. Members are vocalist Estelle H and drummer Isan. The two met in high school music club and, in an unplugged folk arrangement during college, won the Golden Reed Award's composition division in 2015 with the unplugged demo of "Qin Ai De" (Dear). After graduation both entered the tech industry as full-time workers. In the winter of 2018 they renamed the project from "Wei Xiao-ao" to "Our Shame," with Estelle picking up synthesizers and Isan switching to pads, pivoting to folktronica. In 2019 they released EP All Good Things Will Happen, with mixing by Japanese award-winning producer AKNIT. In 2022 their debut album Modern Problem received double nominations at the 13th Golden Indie Music Awards for Best Alternative Pop and Best New Artist, with 60% English-language tracks. On August 4, 2025, their second album Hidden Album was released, with an international production team including British Grammy-winning mixer Jay Reynolds, American Grammy-winning engineer Brian Elgin (credits: Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey), Japan's ASOBOiSM, and France's Odd People Club — the album's themes shifted from "tech anxiety" to "human shadows concealed by technology": self-harm, forbidden love, crypto scams, and female embodied experiences. The track "Miffy" is a tribute to activist Chen Mei-hui. On January 4, 2026, the Hidden Album concert was held.

Winter 2018, a room in Taipei.

Estelle had just bought a synthesizer. Isan had just bought a pad.

They had played together in high school music club, won the Golden Reed Award together in college, and both ended up working full-time in tech after graduation. That day they decided to rename the folk project that had been called "Wei Xiao-ao" into something new.¹

The name was Our Shame (凹與山).

Two Tech Workers' Winter Synthesizers

The band name "Our Shame" (凹與山) has no geographical or Indigenous background — it is a phonetic pun on the two members' nicknames: Estelle (Xiao-ao) and Isan.¹ The English name is Our Shame.

They are an atypical combination in Taiwan's indie band scene: not forged in live houses, but two people working day jobs in tech who write songs in a room at night. This background later became the core subject of their music: how technology packages human anxiety, and what technology conceals.

That winter 2018 decision carried two layers of meaning. The first was instrumentation: the folk arrangement of acoustic guitar and cajon became synthesizer and pad; Isan needed to transition from traditional jazz drumming to operating electronic equipment. The second was musical identity: from "Wei Xiao-ao" (a folk group centered on the vocalist) to "Our Shame" (an equal folktronica duo).¹

Their musical positioning from that point became Folktronica — folk fused with electronic sound. Satellite styles include ambient, downtempo, retrowave, trip-hop, and synth-pop. Critics describe their sound as "a collision of cold digital and warm analog" — synthesizers providing the cold, guitar the warmth; drum machines providing precision, the soulful vocal line providing fragmentation.²

Curator's note
What is interesting about this band is not so much the musical genre as "how two tech-industry workers ended up playing synthesizers." From the Golden Reed Award unplugged victory to an international Grammy-level collaboration, the path runs through two identity transformations: once when they became office workers after graduation, and once in the winter of 2018 when they changed their instruments.

The Unplugged Award-Winners from High School Music Club

The story actually begins earlier.

The two met in high school music club — a classic Taiwanese story of students who love music practicing in the club room after school. Neither had initially planned on becoming a musician.

During college they maintained their musical partnership with a simple arrangement: Estelle played guitar and sang, Isan played cajon.³ In 2015, with the unplugged demo version of _Qin Ai De_ (Dear), they won first place in the composition division of the Golden Reed Award. The Golden Reed Award is Taiwan's university-level music competition, and winning first place meant being seen among the same-generation college creators.³

But this later became a discontinuous high point: immediately after, both graduated and entered the tech industry, and band activities were suspended.¹ This kind of story is common in Taiwan's indie band scene: passionate during college, then ground down by working life after graduation, the band fading away naturally.

What made them different was that seven years later they came back — with synthesizers.

The Name "Richard" Came from a Crash

The first official single after the winter 2018 rebrand was "Richard" (理查).⁴ This song topped StreetVoice's charts for several weeks and has now surpassed a million plays.

The name "Richard" was not arbitrary.

In 2018, Horizon Air experienced an incident: a ground crew worker named Richard Russell stole a Q400 turboprop aircraft, flew it for an hour, and then crashed. It was an internationally shocking aviation event — a baggage handler who had never flown a plane before took it up in a way he knew might mean never coming back.⁴

"Richard" was written for that name. Not reconstructing the event itself, but using electronic arrangement to produce the texture of "being up in the air, not knowing how to come back" — synthesizer sustaining long tones, drum machine rhythms sparse, vocals processed to sound distant. This approach became the prototype of Our Shame's overall aesthetic: not speaking directly about the tragedy, but making the tragedy's aftershock into sound.

All Good Things Will Happen Is a Spell

In June 2019 they released their debut EP _All Good Things Will Happen_ (一切好事都會發生). Four tracks: "Yi Wan" (10,000), "Hai Bian De Fang Jian" (Room by the Sea), "Richard," and "All Good Things Will Happen" (feat. Li Man / Spëll).⁵

There is a specific story behind the EP title. Our Shame's official Facebook describes it this way:

"All Good Things Will Happen" is a spell. On New Year's Eve the year before last, Our Shame's friend Li Man (Spëll) and Wen He were at a convenience store corner and saw a middle-aged couple holding each other's hands, bowing repeatedly to each other saying "All good things will happen," "All good things will happen"...⁵

This image became a song, an EP, and also a kind of creative belief for Our Shame: some things don't need explaining — repeat them enough and they become true. That is the nature of a spell.

The mixing for this EP was done by Japanese award-winning producer AKNIT (real name Toshiya Fueoka).⁵ Our Shame showed a characteristic at this stage that would persist: their choice of collaborators was governed by "find whoever is right for the job," without geographical limits. This approach would be amplified to an even more extreme degree in 2025.

The Year Her Friend Died, She Quit Her Full-Time Job

2022 was a pivotal year for Our Shame. That year Estelle's closest friend died.

This event had two immediate effects on Estelle: she quit her full-time job; and she focused on completing the band's debut full-length album _Modern Problem_.⁶ The album went digital on August 10 and was released physically in late September. 12 tracks, 60% in English. Producer credit: Estelle herself.⁶

Modern Problem's theme is legible from the title: modern people's problems. Messaging app anxiety, social media self-pity, the awkwardness of being left on read, internet addiction, Bay Area homelessness (the track "Hotel 22" adapted from Elizabeth Lo's documentary of the same name). The title track "Modern Problem" features neo-soul/R&B emerging artist LINION as a duet.

The album closes with "party to the moon" — written for the close friend who died. Its approach is not a lament, not a farewell speech, but a surreal scenario of a party on the moon. A song about death that does not directly address death; a passage about loss that does not directly write pain.⁶

The album went on to receive double nominations at the 13th Golden Indie Music Awards: Best Alternative Pop Album and Best New Artist. Although neither award was ultimately won, the double nomination itself was significant recognition in Taiwan's folktronica field.⁷ Simultaneously, Modern Problem was added to private playlists by music editors in Europe, America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. Our Shame quietly began making their way from the extended family of Taiwan's indie bands into the ears of international listeners.

Estelle said in an interview that what she wanted was not a conventional dance track: "I want to make a lonely dance-music feeling — the feeling of dancing with your brain and its memories."⁸

Miffy Is a Tribute to That Miffy

On August 4, 2025, after three years, Our Shame released their second album Hidden Album.⁹

The name Hidden Album carries a double meaning: on one hand it refers to the "hidden album" function in mobile photo apps (the feature on iOS and Android for hiding photos from view), and on the other to the traditional music meaning of "hidden track" (bonus track). Together they point to one thing: those things that have been hidden, kept private, not meant to be seen.⁹

The album's themes advanced forward from Modern Problem's "tech anxiety" into "human shadows concealed by technology": self-harm, forbidden love, addiction, cryptocurrency scams, and female embodied experiences. From "technology makes us anxious" to "technology makes certain things invisible."

The third track is called "Miffy."

This song is a tribute to Chen Mei-hui. Chen Mei-hui was an activist — a cryptocurrency fund-flow analyst who devoted herself professionally to tracing cross-border fraud and cryptocurrency crime, and speaking up for victims.⁹ The chorus of "Miffy" is "fang fo ruo you guang" (as if there might be light) — a phrase taken from something Chen Mei-hui said about her vocation during her lifetime.

This song holds a particular position in Our Shame's body of work: it is a tribute written by female creators for a female professional. In the history of Mandarin pop music in Taiwan, the genre of songs about female heroes is not common. Songs written in tribute to actual female activists and professionals are rarer still.⁹

The entire album unfolds around "concealment," "forbidden speech," and "shame," focusing on female embodied experiences and emotional memories that are difficult to articulate in growing up.⁹ This is the most visible shift between Our Shame's first and second albums: from "writing anxiety that everyone has" to "writing those things that only women experience."

Those Months in Paris Without Rules

Hidden Album also has a distinctive generative context: Estelle went to Paris and wrote there for a period.

The album's overture "Face ID" was written in Paris. Estelle said in an interview afterward: "Paris gave me a feeling of non-coercion, without rules."⁸ This has two layers of meaning: one is the literal geographical meaning (Paris's streets and air gave her a different creative rhythm from Taipei's), and the other is "the sense of non-coercion needed to write this album" — because the album's themes are things that have been hidden, things that cannot be spoken, and the creative process itself required leaving everyday order behind.

"Hollywood Dream" was written during 36 consecutive hours of sleeplessness. That extreme state allowed her to capture "a fatigued, weathered timbre."⁸

Hidden Album's production team is also Our Shame's largest international configuration to date: British Grammy-winning mixer Jay Reynolds handled mixing; American Grammy-winning engineer Brian Elgin (credits: Dua Lipa, Lana Del Rey) handled mastering; rising Japanese rap/R&B producer ASOBOiSM contributed; French electronic producer Odd People Club participated in arrangement; and Taiwan's BRADD (Golden Indie Music Awards R&B Single winner) collaborated on production. An album from a room in Taipei, with five countries' names attached.

Isan articulated the logic of this collaboration model clearly:

"This may be the happiness of the internet age — even the world's greatest producers on the other side of the globe, strangers like us can write to ask, can't we?"¹⁰

From finding Japan's AKNIT to mix the 2019 EP, to inviting Grammy-level collaborators from Britain and America for Hidden Album in 2025, Our Shame spent seven years taking "collaboration with strangers in the internet age" to its extreme. Two tech workers writing songs in a Taipei room, exchanging working files with Grammy engineers half a world away via email.

Hidden Album Is That Hidden Album in Your Phone

On January 4, 2026, Our Shame held the Hidden Album concert.⁹

Counting from the 2015 Golden Reed Award unplugged victory, this marks their eleventh year as a band. From two female students in a high school music club, to a college-era unplugged folk duo, to full-time tech workers, to the winter 2018 rebrand as a folktronica duo, to the 2022 double-nominated newcomers at the Golden Indie Music Awards, to the 2025 second album made with Grammy-level teams — this trajectory is not the typical indie band growth curve.

Our Shame's true distinctiveness is that they spent ten years turning "things that can't be said" into "sounds that can be played". Musical genre and international collaboration network are both byproducts.

Modern Problem wrote the anxiety that everyone has — messaging apps, read receipts without reply, social media self-pity. Anxiety everyone knows they have, just too embarrassed to admit.

Hidden Album writes something one layer deeper — self-harm, forbidden love, cryptocurrency fraud victims, female embodied experiences. Not just "too embarrassed to admit" — "impossible to say at the office at all."

A tech worker's after-work hours, sitting at a synthesizer, making the things that couldn't be said during the day into music with a dance-music feeling.

That is Our Shame.

Further Reading

• Taiwan Indie Music — the historical context of Taiwan's indie band ecosystem in the 2010s–2020s and the folktronica genre
• Taiwan Pop Music — the Mandarin pop industry structure and indie bands' position within it
• Cicada — another indie band taking an instrumental / non-mainstream path; a contrast of two "not taking the idol route" creative strategies
• Wei Ju-hsuan — another trajectory moving from mainstream visibility to indie music in the second half of the 2000s
• Hello Nico — another Taiwanese indie female voice from the 2010s, dream pop sound wrapping suppression

References